#and fenris exploring the rest of thedas and finally understanding anders

[mascindulgence]

understanding

[talesfromthefade]

Fenris x Anders (Wings!AU), for @dadrunkwriting​, and @contreparry​

“Fenris,” Anders hedges, worrying his bottom lip. Part of the mage loathes the idea of bringing it up. And having this conversation now, when he’s just given the elf permission to touch and try to clean up his wings a bit, seems more than a little reckless. The healer in him, though, can’t quite push the thought out of his head.

“Yes, mage,” Fenris hums, finding and spinning a chair around and sweeping the dust from it, before gesturing for him to take it. Anders does, sitting backward, and slowly, taking care not to hit anything with them unfolds his wings. Resisting the urge to sneeze as the slight draft the movement creates sweeps up more dust into the air and grains to twinkle in the air where the sun drifting in through the large hole in the roof. It’s so rare for him to have the opportunity, to feel safe to set them free like this, it’s a surprise to see just how big and long they are, and for a moment he forgets what it was he wanted to ask. Fenris, for his part, seems equally transfixed, looking on with something akin to wonder and awe that makes Anders’s heart clench. He clears his throat, clearing with it the confusing swirl of thoughts and feelings that the elf seems to stir up whenever he is around.

“About what you told- well, what you showed me last night,” Anders says, returning to his earlier question and purpose. Fenris’ hands which had just begun to stretch out for his wings halt their progress and hang suspended in the air between them. Fenris had mentioned binding being bad for the ribs, so the elf can’t be entirely unaware that the means he’s using to compress his chest isn’t the healthiest. But perhaps he doesn’t know there are other options available to him? Given what little detail Fenris has offered up about life as a slave in Tevinter, Anders has no idea how long Fenris has been doing this, but he can’t imagine the Master he describes would have been in any way helpful or supportive. “There’s um-” Andraste’s knickerweasels, but this is awkward. Thank the Maker he doesn’t have to make any sort of eye contact while he’s getting this out, or Anders might just lose his nerve. Taking a breath, the mage does his best to slide into a more objective state of mind, to speak to him as though this were anyone else, one of his patients. “There are certain garments that will do the work of those bandages you had on yesterday without so much pressure on your ribs. Breathes a bit better too, as I understand it. I won’t pretend I’m an expert or anything, but I could ask around for you. Discretely,” he adds quickly. “See if there are any tailors around Kirkwall that know how to make them. Seems like there must be someone.”

“Fenris,” Anders ventures softly when the elf fails to make any sort of reply. The mage turns a little on the chair he’s straddling, but Fenris is just standing there, hands still frozen outstretched for his wings, wide green eyes staring at him.

“I- I knew there had to be… others,” the elf manages finally, finally letting his hands fall back to his sides for a moment. “But I thought-” he shakes his head. “Usually they are the sort you see at the Rose.”

“Women? In the business of corsets and clothing to, ahem, emphasize the assets,” Anders supplies with an amused quirk of a brow. Fenris nods. “Well, as I said, I can’t pretend to be an expert, but yes, you aren’t the first or only person the Maker put in the wrong body.” The elf’s breath catches for a moment, and Anders can’t do this over his shoulder anymore, spinning around on the chair to face him.

“You really believe that?”

“Of course, don’t you? Fenris, have you never talked with anyone else about this,” Anders asks carefully. Fenris frowns, fingers twitching nervously at his side before he curls them into fists to still them, before he finally shakes his head. “Oh, the way she talks, I thought maybe you and Isabela were…”

“No,” Fenris replies, shaking his head again. “She flirts. Doubtless, she would like to. But we are just friends.”

“Right. Well, you know, I daresay she’s a bit more…worldly than most of the rest of our group-” Fenris snorts.

“That’s a tactful way of putting it.” Anders shrugs.

“I was more referring to culturally with her having traveled to every corner of Thedas with a port, but yes, I suppose that too. Anyway, she might not be the worst person to talk to, was my point.”

“You’re not doing so bad.”

“If you say so,” Anders laughs, shaking his head softly.

“I do,” Fenris nods. “Now, we were going to do something about your wings,” the elf reminds him, gesturing back towards the chair. Anders nods, accepting albeit abrupt shift in the conversation. Fenris is done talking about it, done being vulnerable for now. Anders will take his turn, returning to straddle the chair and shaking out his wings once more.

“You know, for what it’s worth,” Anders offers quietly before he can stop himself, settling his chin on the back of the chair and stretching his wings back out for the elf to examine, “I’m pretty sure she’d still be interested.”

“You are surprisingly invested in this Mage, is there a wager on it? Varric? Hawke?”

“No,” Anders laughs. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pressure you at all. Just-” but suddenly Anders can’t seem to voice exactly what he means by it. That Fenris doesn’t have to be alone? Unless that’s what he wants.

“Just,” Fenris prompts curiously.

“Hawke wasn’t wrong,” Anders replies, plowing forward before he can lose his nerve. “You’re a very handsome elf.” Especially when you do that, the Healer thinks before he can stop himself as Fenris’ cheeks and ears flame slightly at the compliment. “The right people will see that. See you.”

“Thank you,” Fenris chokes out finally. Anders nods, letting his chin fall back to the chair once more.

The healer’s not entirely sure what he expected when he agreed to let Fenris help put his wings back together again, but this definitely wasn’t one of the scenarios Anders had imagined. The elf touch is so light, so cautious he’s not even aware he’s begun before he suddenly stumbles across a particular spot, touches in just such a way Anders twists to duck out from under it with a peel of laughter.

“Oh,” Fenris smiles, looking relieved as Anders gets himself back under control once more, clearly momentarily worried he may have done something wrong or hurt him when he first pulled away. “You’re ticklish,” the elf observes, his smile sliding into something closer to a smirk.

“If you tell anyone,” Anders threatens, but it’s halfhearted at best, and Fenris seems to know better than to be cowed by it.

“Who would I tell Mage? Besides, how would you have me explain how I know that?”

“You know, we could be friendly with each other.”

“Is that not what we are doing now,” Fenris asks curiously, and Anders fights a shiver as the elf’s fingers trail carefully through his primaries looking for places they snag, feathers out of place.

“Around the rest of them.” Fenris hums thoughtfully, gently guiding a vein back into line with the others.

“And deprive them of their entertainment,” the elf teases. Then, softer, with something of an apology in it as he carefully knocks one or two smaller, loose feathers and down from the mess Anders has made of them, “I- I’m trying, mage,” he admits.

“I know,” Anders acknowledges quietly. Because he does. They’re not about to agree on everything, or even most things, and bickering is more or less the basis of their relationship with each other, but their squabbles have become noticeably more civil, respectful of each other’s traumas than they once were. “Me too.”

They fall quiet for a while, only the rustle of wings and slide of patient and gentle fingers sliding over feathers filling the space between them. But it’s a comfortable silence now.  It is, as Fenris had suggested when he’d first brought up the possibility of this, rather intimate. Karl was the only other person who knew about his wings, and even then, trapped in the Circle as they were, he never had the opportunity to touch or to care for them like this. And it is care. So unexpected and so much Anders finds himself tearing up despite his best efforts. Fenris can’t possibly miss it, as close as he is standing to him, but the elf doesn’t make any comment, not even when Anders shifts a little to retrieve his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his nose.

He’s finished. Fenris has left no stone unturned, no vein free from his explorative and attentive fingers, no feather out of place. Regardless of whether or not they can actually give him flight, they should do a better job of keeping the mage warm, perhaps even waterproof now if they work anything like the book on birds he borrowed from Hawke’s library knew what it was talking about. They look better. Anders does too, more relaxed for his efforts, and perhaps the relief of his brief bout of tears. Still, Fenris is reluctant to pull away just yet. When will he get another chance like this? He’s done his best, but there’s certainly no guarantee Anders will look for a repeat performance, or that he will seek the elf out when he does.

Slowly, Fenris reaches out once more for Anders’s scapulars, then slides a little higher taking the muscles of the healer’s shoulders between his thumb and fingers and digging in. Anders protests, something about it being unnecessary, and Fenris not needing to do this come to an abrupt stop, swallowed by a grateful moan when he finds and begins to work out a particularly stubborn knot.

It’s been years. The last time he’d done this had been for another mage. Danarius. This isn’t anything like that, though, the elf reminds himself, pushing out the unpleasant memories that threaten to creep in. Anders didn’t ask, the mage, this mage, didn’t demand or expect this from him. Fenris chose this. Offered it freely, and Anders expresses his gratitude and appreciation just as openly as he becomes steadily more boneless and held up by the chair he occupies.

“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to get my feet to work now,” Anders jokes softly when Fenris steps back, admiring his handiwork.

“Don’t,” Fenris replies decisively watching as Anders carefully tucks his wings back in again. And suddenly the mage is wrapped and scooped up in strong arms and being carried over and deposited onto the bed. “Go back to bed, mage. Your Clinic will keep a few hours more.”

“But-” Anders protests weakly because certainly, he is tired, but the refugees depend upon him, and this is not the guest bed he used last night. The pillows and bedding smell distinctly of the handsome elf who’s tucking him into it. And when did he start noticing what Fenris smells like?

“Resist the urge to argue with me for once, Mage,” Fenris replies softly with a smile. “You look exhausted.”

“Alright,” he agrees, eyes already half-closed with sleep, which Fenris answers with a happy hum. Anders thinks there may have been the fleeting press of something, maybe lips on his brow, but is sure when he wakes a few hours later, far better rested, he probably just dreamed it.

[enrychan]

comparison mass effect andromeda / dragon age 2, yeah or nope? i hear that a lot around the fandom

short answer: nope

extremely long answer [lots of MEA negativity and Personal Opinions™ under the cut, you’ve been warned. Please don’t read if you enjoyed the game and/or you are tired of hearing negative things about it, believe me i totally understand the feeling]:

alright i’m not going to act like DA2 wasn’t disappointing because yes, it was. especially after a game like DAO which remains among the best RPGs i’ve ever played. so I would compare MEA to DA2 because they are both disappointments. that said, i still disagree with the part of the fandom that says they are similar because of the “smaller story” and/or “the focus on the characters”. DA2 is a smaller story than DAO, but it’s laser focused on the delivery of that story within a three chapters arc, and through its characters. Exploration is almost non-existent and the fetch quests are few and so unimportant you can skip them without missing anything. The companions are the true narrative and emotional center, and each one of them has a personal mission during each one of the three chapters of the story. Some of them (especially Anders and Fenris) represent a piece of the problems and politics of Thedas and force Hawke to make decisions regarding those problems. Their growth and fate depend almost entirely on their relationship with Hawke and on the choices of the player.

On the other hand, MEA is all over the place. it gives me a number of huge maps filled with nothing but fetch quests that don’t make the narrative proceed in any way and are entirely forgettable. The game also gives me a humongous researching/developing system for weapons and armor with an absolutely ridiculous and confusing as hell UI, which requires three different currencies (milky way tech, kett tech, remnant tech), that you have to collect by scanning things, just to research the projects for said weapons and armor, not to mention the materials to actually build the fucking things - which come in like six or seven different levels, so if you want to update your weapon or armor to the next level you have to gather the materials all over again. That’s insane. At some point I just skipped that mess altogether and went through the rest of the game with my shitty level 2 gear because i was sick and tired of scanning and gathering and researching just to discover lately that i didn’t like how my new weapon worked and i wasted time for nothing. Obviously that meant the combat was much harder for me than it needed to be. There is a more in depth analysis on the researching/developing system in this review, if you’re interested. I’m not going to delve into the ridiculous implications of having to scan the rebels’ tech on Kadara to get milky way tech currency, like on the Nexus they don’t have, I don’t know, archives or books on their own technology?

I’ll also add that while the combat is probably the best part of the game, and it’s much more dynamic than in the trilogy, it’s still much less fun for me because they took away the option to order your companions to use a certain power, preventing me from planning any tactic or combo. this also had the side effect of creating another layer of separation between my Ryder and her companions; like there weren’t enough already, with the mediocre writing and everything else going wrong in this game. Basically I always fought like I was alone and most time i actually was because my two companions were KO and i didn’t care, as they were almost useless to me.

I should probably add that the quest design in MEA is atrocious, the worst of every bioware game i’ve played - and i played most of them. for almost every mission i was required to go to a certain planet, than back to the ship, than back to a planet, then back to the ship… each time going through unskippable cutscenes and loading screens. Luckily for me when i played the game they already patched the galactic map, letting me skip the cutscenes of the voyage between planets, which are very pretty at first but at the fifteenth time they start to really grate on your nerves. And despite the patch, the voyage is still very slow compared to, say, ME3. I cannot even imagine the pain of the day 1 players who were forced to suffer through those unskippable cutscenes hundreds of times. Some missions (the worst ones imo) require you to follow a signal through more than two solar systems, reading a series of five or six “false positives” or whatever, before finally finding the “real one” and conclude the mission; an utter pain in the ass and a complete waste of time. I understand that MEA had huge problems during its development, but this kind of stuff has nothing to do with those problems and everything to do with artificially extending your gaming time with boring activities, just to say that the game is “100 hours long”.

At this point I want to make clear that I would have forgiven everything - the fetch quests, the confusing crafting system, the awful quest design - if Bioware gave me a good protagonist and/or interesting companions. Not even a good story really, I didn’t even care about that, just give me a fully flashed out crew with clear motivations and backgrounds and I’ll be happy. That’s basically the reason why I forgive every shortcoming in DA2 - and there are a loooot of those. But nope, Andromeda fails there too.

With the exception of Jaal and to a lesser extent, Cora, the loyalty missions of the companions are completely disjointed from the main story and universe in which they are set and don’t make us understand more of this new galaxy in any way. This lack of relevance would still be ok if the relationship between the companions and the protagonist and/or the protagonist’s choices actually mattered (like in DA2, where the companions’ loyalty determines who lives and who dies in the end) but unfortunately they don’t, and i mean at all.

Speaking of the protagonist, again the comparison with Hawke doesn’t hold. Hawke could have three very distinct personalities which made them somewhat memorable, for good or bad. Ryder on the other hand has two or more kind of replies that are almost always the same, just with slightly different wording (as this video says: do you know the difference between “now we are building again” and “this is vital to our progress”? - not that i agree with everything said in that review but here i agree completely). Ryder fares even worse if compared to other bioware protagonists like the Warden, who had a wide range of reactions that in some cases could even include outright killing their interlocutor. Combine this with the almost complete lack of choices and/or consequences in MEA and you get the most forgettable and boring protagonist of a bioware game to date; and yeah, I’m including the Inquisitor, because while the choices of dialogue in DAI were similar to those in MEA, at least the facial animations were decent so you could have a connection with your own protagonist on some level.

To be clear, it’s not lost to me what the original intention was with Ryder’s character arc. Ryder is specifically written as inadequate, uncharismatic and sometimes incompetent, because they weren’t the intended heir to the title of Pathfinder. They kinda found themselves thrown into that role and had to adapt. On its own that’s not a bad character arc at all. On the contrary, it could have been even more interesting than Shepard’s, who was a leader even before the first mission in ME1. Unfortunately there is no actual character arc for Ryder, only premises. Ryder never becomes more charismatic or assertive during the story, in fact they make very few choices at all, and even those few have little to no consequences both in the main story and in their relationships with the other characters. Ryder is just kinda there, reacting with various shades of tone to other characters actually making choices. Again compare that to Hawke’s arc, since we are discussing whether or not the two games resemble each other. In DA2 there is a simple premise (Hawke is a poor refugee who runs from the Blight and has to survive in an unforgiving city like Kirkwall) and a very clear payoff (Hawke becomes one of the central political figures in Kirkwall, while ironically still not being able to save their own family and, possibly, friends). With Ryder there is a clear premise but no payoff. At least not on a personal level, which is important in creating a connection with our character. Of course the story goes on anyway, but it doesn’t seem to actually affect my protagonist or change them in any way, so it remains almost irrelevant to me.

Everything said until now would be already experience breaking on its own, but it becomes even more remarkable in Ryder’s specific case, because Ryder comes with an extra passenger, aka SAM - and SAM is a very invasive extra passenger. To the point that most of the time you’re convinced it’s not actually Ryder the one in charge of that brain, or of the Pathfinder team. 99% of the time it’s SAM who solves problems and tells you and the others what to do. Sometimes is becomes frankly annoying. I’m not even talking about the vaults. You have to solve a murder case? SAM doesn’t just gather the evidence, oh no, he also tells you exactly what the evidence means and how it must be interpreted, like Ryder is too stupid to connect the dots. You intervene in a beating or a robbery on Kadara, either to stop it or just to understand what’s going on? SAM tells you not to get involved. And guess what? Ryder does exactly that, instead of, idk, telling SAM to shut the fuck up? SAM also becomes downright unbearable on Voeld and on Elaaden where it keeps telling you that the temperature is rising or falling or that it’s within acceptable range. I don’t know if they finally patched the thing but god was that annoying.

In any case my point is, since it’s actually SAM and not Ryder that does all the work, you have the distinct feeling that you are not actually the protagonist in this story, just a vessel. That could have been a cool premise if, for example, Ryder leaned too much on SAM and then halfway through the story it was taken away or shut down. That could have been a dramatic moment of growth for Ryder, where they were forced to finally rely on their own strenght and actually become the Pathfinder humanity needed. But again: cool premise, no payoff. SAM is taken away only near the end of the story and Ryder almost dies because of that. And even when they can’t access their SAM during the final mission, there is still the SAM inside the other Ryder sibling’s brain to tell them and you what to do. In short, Ryder is almost entirely dependent on SAM throughout the entire story, making them even less memorable as a protagonist, if possible.

Unfortunately, the same could be said of most of the characters that populate Andromeda and particularly the Tempest. Jaal is relevant only because he is an angara, the only new friendly species introduced in MEA (another disappointment), but he is otherwise completely forgettable on his own. It’s repeated over and over again how the angara have an extremely open behaviour towards each other, expressing feelings without many constraints like we do, but the problem is, without good and complex facial/body animations, that kind of behaviour is hard if not impossible to deliver. I think that’s one of the main problems with Jaal’s character. The other main problem is of course the writing, always generic and kind of vague. For example when you ask him about his relationship with the Moshae, he tells you that she “inspires” and he “loves her”, but he doesn’t give you anything that actually communicates that inspiration and that love, even only through the tone of his voice (has anyone given some direction to these voice actors?). It’s only telling without showing. Compare that to Dorian talking about Felix, for example. With just one image (Felix sneaking him treats from the kitchen while he was studying) he gives you an idea of both the person that Felix was and his relationship with him.

Cora is similar to Ryder in the fact that her character has good premises, but no payoff. She has two main character traits: she was trained as an asari commando and has great admiration for them; and she was the second in command under Alec Ryder, so she should have become the Pathfinder, but she didn’t. Aside from the fact that in my opinion she repeats that she was trained as an asari commando a little too many times, like she wanted to be 200% sure we got the message, and that becomes kind of annoying after a while… if we take a look at her character arc we see that there is a great disappointment when she finds out that the asari heroine that she admired the most lied about the death of the asari Pathfinder for her own personal gain. This should have set in motion a series of consequences on her character journey similar to those Liara experienced when she found out that the Protheans weren’t actually the ethereal, moral beings she thought they were, but instead they were conquerors and imposed a totalitarian regime on the galaxy. But while Liara at first gets angry and sad and then she slowly accepts to re-examine her own previous work under a new light, no relevant change can be seen within Cora’s character. More on this comparison can be found in this excellent video. In a similar way, her other main trait (the fact that she was the designated successor to Alec but she didn’t get the Pathfinder title in the end), also doesn’t have any payoff. In fact she is just slightly disappointed/irritated at first but she gets over it very quickly (even if Ryder is clearly not the charismatic figure humanity needs) leaving little to no consequence on her relationship with Ryder. In these conditions, the scenes in which she talks about her hobby ring hollow because I didn’t previously build my relationship with her on anything substantial, so I don’t really care about her plants.

I’d say the only companion who gets a very simple but complete character arc is Peebee, because she starts as kind of an outsider in the group, extremely afraid of commitment (the writers made sure it was super obvious with the “I live in an escape pod” thing), and in the end she learns to relax a little and trust Ryder and the rest of the crew more. Unfortunately I also found her annoying as hell since her first appearance, so that didn’t do a thing for me.

I could go on with the other companions, but this reply would become a bible. I’ll just add that the “good premises - no payoff” thing includes non-companion characters as well, Reyes for example. For the first 40/45 hours I didn’t romance anyone because, well, I found every possible LI either boring, paper thin or annoying af. That’s something I never experienced in any other Bioware game, but hey there’s a first time for everything I guess. Then I went to Kadara, I met Reyes and honestly he was a breath of fresh air. I’m not saying he was particularly deep or complex, but at least he was somewhat charismatic and charming (also, that accent), so I decided to romance him. Unfortunately both his character and his romance get no satisfying closure, as there is literally no change whatsoever, external or internal, if you let him kill Sloane; and you can’t really confront him on the fact that he used you and lied to you, even if you romanced him so it should have been kind of a big deal. bigger deal. whatever.

I’m not preteding that something like this never happened before. Speaking about the Mass Effect trilogy, Jacob is the most infamous example of boring, not entirely flashed out companion. Moving to the most recent Dragon Age, I’d say Blackwall also suffers from something similar, since he has good premises (she is vague and evasive at first because he’s lying about his true identity) but little payoff (even after the big reveal he remains pretty vague and generic about himself and his own story, nor he behaves even slightly different than before), though he’s still more interesting than the majority of the MEA crew. The point is, some shortcomigs are normal and expected and, if counter-balanced with other high points, they can be forgiven. But Andromeda didn’t shine in any way. Outside of combat the gameplay was boring and clunky, basically go from point A to point B, scan stuff, gather stuff, repeat. The sudoku puzzles were boring af and honesly ridiculous. No one ever solved them before you? is everyone in the Heleus cluster a moron?

In fact, the whole foundation of the story is that no one in the Heleus cluster could gain access to the vaults and activate them, despite having known and studied them for centuries. One day a complete stranger from another galaxy comes and solves everything in literally five minutes. And I’m supposed to believe that. I mean my suspension of disbelief can stretch a lot, but this is a little too much for me. Also that makes the angara seem like a bunch of idiots, which is not exactly flattering for the only new friendly species we meet in Andromeda.

The writing in general is poor to say the least. I understand that the writers were included too late into the project due to the huge problems experienced during the earlier stages of development, but some of these mistakes are super basic, like writing from the POV of the omniscient narrator instead of the POV of the characters. So we get dialogues in which the characters know that they are in no real danger even though they have been shot, they are about to get shot, they risk getting spaced, and so on and so forth.

I get that the writers were aiming at something completely different from the grim, fatalistic atmosphere of ME3, but the problem is: if the script doesn’t take itself seriously, why should I take it seriously.I mean I’m all for jokes and lighthearted moments, there were a lot of those in the trilogy and i loved them (most of them), but the entire MEA script doesn’t seem to take itself seriously. The stakes SHOULD be high - the Pathfinders have the responsibility of 100.000 souls on their shoulders - but not for a moment you feel that burden, that responsibility.

Even the real reason of the voyage itself (escaping the Milky Way before the Reapers annihilate every advanced organic society) is kept secret from the player until you gather all the “memory triggers” your father left behind. Until then the whole Initiative - a huge, extremely dangerous and exceedingly expensive project - is presented like a fun stroll through a new galaxy, just because “we are explorers” and we like new beginnings and whatnot. This is another incomprehensible narrative choice that doesn’t make sense, no matter how you look at it. If you played the trilogy, the Reaper threat is certainly no surprise to you so the “plot twist” doesn’t work. If you’re a newcomer to the series you don’t even know what a Reaper is so the “plot twist” still doesn’t work. Not to mention that for some reason Alec Ryder’s “memory triggers” are scattered on planets he never even visited in his life. Instead of placing them somewhere among his things, idk, family pictures, books or music he loved, where it made sense to find them?

And even after you discover everything about the Reapers, and that everyone back in the Milky Way may have been dead for the last 600 years, there is again no consequence in the story or in the dialogues whasoever. Not even Ryder seems to be particularly affected by the terrible news. But we should be happy because we found out that their mom is still alive! Too bad we don’t care about her because we don’t know her. Exactly like in the beginning we didn’t care about Alec’s death because we didn’t know him. Those are extremely basic narrative mistakes. The whole experience is on this same, boring, safe, non-consequential level. Bioware is so much better than that.

(sorry for the long rant. I had a lot to say)